Get FITTE

FITTE is a quick, handy acronym to help you remember all the elements of an exercise routine that you need to improve your fitness. It's a good way, especially for beginners, to start thinking about working out. As you begin to make exercise a part of your lifestyle, you'll want to vary or increase some or all elements of the FITTE principle:

Frequency: How often you work out

Intensity: How hard you work out (measuring with a heart rate monitor or using rate of

perceived exertion)

Time: The duration of your workout

Type: The kind of exercise you're doing

Enjoyment: How much pleasure you get out of the activity

Frequency

The American Council on Exercise recommends 20 to 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise 3 to 5 days a week (depending on intensity; a shorter workout duration calls for more intensity) and strength training at least twice a week. You can combine cardio

and strength on some days or keep them separate.

Intensity: Load, Speed, and Effort

There are many ways to increase or decrease intensity.

Load: This is the amount of resistance you use in your workout. For strength training, you can use your own body weight as resistance or increase the load (and intensity) by adding weights.

Speed: During your cardio workouts, you can amp up intensity by simply going faster. It will help you burn more calories and strengthen your heart. You can vary speed in the strength exercises, too. When exercising with dumbbells, keep your speed under control to ensure that you never swing the weights.

Effort: This is one of the most common ways to vary intensity. The Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE), shown on page 20, is an easy-to-follow self-measurement. Use the rating scale to gauge how your body feels when you're working out. RPE ranges from 6 (no exertion at all) to 20 (maximal exertion).

Calculating Your Target Heart Rate

The rate of perceived exertion scale relates to your exercise heart rate as well. We all have a resting heart rate (our pulse rate when we are immobile), a maximum heart rate (the highest rate we should reach in a workout), and a target heart rate zone (for maximum fat burning). Your target heart in the target heart rate zone. That person would

need to increase the intensity and be more in the 14 to 16 range to achieve the 148 to 157 target heart rate zone. Looking at the RPE scale, this makes sense, as that range represents "somewhat hard" to "hard."

Time

Time (or duration) is how long you actually exercise. We're all challenged to find time to exercise, but it's important to stick to your exercise schedule and put in as many minutes or hours as you can dedicate if you want to achieve your weight-loss goals.

Type

The type of exercise you choose will have a great impact on whether you can maintain a fitness program.

If you prefer, fulfill your 30 minutes of aerobic exercise with cycling rather than walking.

Studies show that you'll be more likely to stick to an exercise program if you like what you're doing.

Other options are swimming, jumping rope, and aerobics classes. If you don't enjoy lifting dumbbells, try using tubing, elastic bands, medicine balls, weighted water balls, and stability balls (go to www.biggestloser.com for products).

Enjoyment

You'll find former Biggest Loser contestants training for marathons, competing in triathlons and Ironmans, teaching yoga classes, rock climbing-- and doing just about any other type of physical activity you can imagine. Once you find a form of exercise you love and look forward to doing, you're more likely to stick to your workout schedule

and meet your goals. Many of the contestants who once professed to "hate" exercising find that it's something they simply can't live without today.

Ali Vincent, a self-proclaimed exercise addict, says she can hardly believe that she used to sit around and watch TV at night. "I just don't feel right if I don't go to the gym," she says. "It's not just something I have to do, it's something I want to do."